One of my students is happy to know what is Fundulus heteroclitus!

This isn't really about Alabama fish. But I'm teaching a Biology 1 class, BYS 119, this summer. One of the students is older and works full-time for some kind of biotech company. I've talked to him earlier about Conservation Fisheries, Inc., (CFI) up in Knoxville, TN, who he came across with his daughter who goes to the Univ. of Tennessee. He even bought a CFI t-shirt and yukked it up with J.R. Shute and Pat Rakes, who told him that they knew that I hadn't bought one of their fundraising t-shirts. It's true, I just haven't done it yet, even though I urge everyone to go ahead and buy one (check out the latest CFI newsletter).

What really made this student happy is that at a Bioinformatics meeting last week he was almost the only participant who knew what is a Fundulus heteroclitus. One of the case studies involved this species, one of my favorite fish, the mummichog, commonly found in Atlantic coast salt marshes. All of the bioinformaticians had no idea what was going on. The mummichog has become a standard study animal especially in toxicology studies and now in genomics, I guess. I'm honored that attending my class gave this student a leg up on a bunch of genetic data miners.